It's 5 am in the morning as I write this, and I've just spent the last 48 hours straight mentoring at HackED, HackDavis, and SB Hacks, so you'll have to forgive me if my structure isn't on point.
My experiences in the hacker community have by and large been extremely positive, thanks to the amazing network of people that hold the community up on their shoulders.
Every single mentoring experience, every single hackathon participated in, have all served to deepen my bonds in this community. I've met some truly amazing people along the way, networked with people who are not even close to me geographically, people I would never have gotten the chance to meet if not for this community.
My most recent (and stand-out) experiences in this community are:
a) Participating in (and potentially winning! The final results are not out at the time of writing this post, but fingers crossed!) Major League Hacking's Local Hack Day: Build 2021, and
b) Mentoring at HackDavis 2021
a)
The 'day' part of the name 'Local Hack Day' is a misnomer (and so is the 'Local' part) - LHD: Build 2021 was an event that stretched across a week, involving people from all around the globe, and whose goal was to encourage hackers to push the boundaries of their comfort zones - task by task, workshop by workshop, challenge by challenge.
The week consisted of daily challenges on a (no points for guessing!) daily basis, as well as larger projects that you could pursue over the course of a week.
These projects / hack-challenges were all over the place - one day, you'd be building a flask web app in python, and the next day, dealing with blockchain for a fintech hack, with workshops, live streams, and mini-events peppered in between.
These streams and workshops were challenge-based, so if you found a particular task to be too challenging, you could tune into that particular stream to borrow some tips and inspiration from a more seasoned MLH Coach.
Overall, I felt like the past week was one of amazing learnings, getting my feet wet in many new stacks (Winning doesn't hurt either :P)
Moving on to my second experience,
While LHD was about building and hacking together projects, there's something I enjoy even more: helping people out and mentoring them.
This is something I got from HackDavis, where I did my best to help out a bunch of hackers trying to put together projects on incredibly short timelines.
My role at HackDavis involved helping out the hackers that raised support tickets, when they faced difficulty with a concept or issue. Not only did I get the satisfaction of helping the community from this, I met a ton of really amazing fellow mentors, and was able to network effectively, in a non-stiff manner.
All-in-all, this week has been an amazing start to 2021, and I'm expecting great things from my interactions with the hacker community this year!
Signing off,
Sreekaran
Top comments (0)